Burning wine questions, answered

We can only hope that AOL's acquisition of the Huffington Post won't affect HuffPo content like Gregory Dal Piaz's Snooth section, a must-read for wine enthusiasts, novices, and everyone in between.

The Snooth feature we in the pBurbs Wine Guide enjoy the most is when Dal Piaz answers those common questions about wine we might be too intimidated to ask, lest we come across as foolish. But remember, as Dal Piaz says, "there are no stupid questions, only stupid answers!"

With that in mind, let's look at a couple of interesting questions Del Piaz recently answered:

Does wine taste different depending on the glass it's served in?

This one is a bit tricky, but here goes. Yes, and no. Some wines are really very simple and your experience with them will vary little no matter what glass you drink it from. Other wines can have certain elements that can be highlighted, or minimized, depending on the style of glassware. For example, a wine with high alcohol will often show better from a glass that is wide and generously sized. This allows the alcohol that evaporates from the surface of the wine to dissipate a bit before hitting your nose, and as we know, we really do taste mostly with our noses.

Does the taste of wine change as it hits different parts of your mouth?

On a more basic level, we can sense five elements of taste (sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami) with our tongue. Manipulating the flow of wine into the mouth can affect where a wine hits your tongue, fundamentally changing how one perceives that wine. For example, the tip of one's tongue has a high concentration of sweetness receptors. Creating a glass that allows the wine to flow over the tip while directing it more towards the middle of the tongue could make a wine seem less sweet while highlighting its acidity, since there are more acid receptors towards the middle of one's tongue. There are many in the culinary community who dispute this concept of tongue-mapping, arguing that the receptors are more evenly spread throughout one's mouth. I'm not going to hash that argument out here, but I am unconvinced that the tongue does not have increased sensitivities to certain tastes in certain areas.

Click here to read more burning wine questions, answered.

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